This App Knows When You've Been in an Accident—and Then It Calls 911 for You

The Noonlight mobile application accesses a smartphone's sensors to determine if the phone's owner has been in an auto accident, and can alert 911 emergency services if needed.

Credit: Noonlight

The Noonlight rescue-service connection platform has developed a mobile application with a feature called "automatic crash detection and response," based on an algorithm that accesses a smartphone's sensors so the platform can measure and detect tiny changes in user location, motion, and force.

If the sensors detect a sudden change in motion and force indicating that the user was in a car accident, the app alerts 911.

Noonlight depends on a smartphone's global positioning system, accelerometer, gyroscope, proximity meter, and magnetometer. The sensors are used in conjunction with analytics data from billions of miles of driver data, which the algorithm analyzes and regularly updates to boost accuracy.

Noonlight's Nick Droege says, "Our big audience is potentially parents who can add this to a teenager's phone so they know that in the event that something happens on the road, help will get to them," as well as seniors who may have trouble calling emergency services.